K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

How little I know

I do not know everything. Of course, knowing that I don’t know everything only means that I know how little I know, and that I know that I don’t know something when I see it.

Setting aside grammatical parlor tricks, this is an issue because the giant list of software that I found a few months ago is populated with a lot — and I mean a lot — of stuff that I just … don’t know.

Perhaps an example would be a better way to explain it. Arch has arpwatch in AUR, which comes bundled with arpsnmp — both of which are on that list.

But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to use it, or why I would want to. Hence, no screenshots. :(

I’m still pretty much a desktop user (even though my desktops are rather bizarre ;) ), which means one of two things to me: Either I will never need arpwatch/arpsnmp, or I already use them and I am oblivious, because they’re buried deep under layers of other software that shroud them from view.

Both are possible, and both are fine with me. But what that means is that arping, arpoison and arpspoof are likewise mysteries to me. Maybe I will never in my life need them, and maybe I use them every day and just don’t know it.

And so I’m back to where I started, admitting exactly how little I know.

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6 thoughts on “How little I know”

It is very unlikely you use them unless you are doing some kind of network attacks an a LAN, which it does not sound like you’re doing. In general arp just works, those tools are to make it work in a way it wasn’t designed to, for the most part.

From the README file:
This directory contains source code for arpwatch and arpsnmp, tools
that monitors ethernet or fddi activity and maintain a database of
ethernet/ip address pairings. It also reports certain changes via
email.

I bet you don’t know exactly which packages you’re using. They may present in your system, but you just don’t notice how they are used. It is true for Linux and for Windows both.
And that’s what dependency resolving is for.